“Th’ wind’s freshenin’, and she feels like snow. I’m expectin’ a white camp tonight,” observed Indian Jake when they had passed out of The Jug and out of the view of the cabin.
“She does feel like snow,” said David, “but it’s a good wind for us, and if she holds where she is we’ll make a fine run up Grand Lake.”
“Yes,” agreed Indian Jake, blowing a mouthful of smoke from his pipe and watching its direction. “She’s east nor’east now, and fine. We’d better not lose any time stopping at the post.”
“No,” said David, “not with a fine breeze like this. Pop was four days gettin’ up th’ Lake last year, with contrary winds.”
It was a somber morning. Gray clouds hung low and the wind was damp and cold, but it was a fair wind, and before nine o’clock they came abreast the post. Zeke Hodge saw them and hailed and they answered his hail, but passed on into the river without stopping, at which Zeke marveled, for he had never before known a boat to pass the post without pausing at least for a brief call.
The tide was nearing flood, and this was vastly to their advantage in counteracting the river current, and the five miles to Grand Lake was accomplished in an hour.
“Oh, ’tis grand!” exclaimed Andy when the long vista of lake appeared before them.
“Aye,” said David, “’tis that, and that’s why she’s called Grand Lake, I’m thinkin’.”
At the eastern end of the lake, where they entered it, both the northern and southern shores were lined with low hills wooded to their summits with spruce, white birch, balsam fir, and tamarack, the foliage of the latter making golden splotches in the green. Some few miles up the lake the wooded hills on its southern shore gave place to naked mountains, with perpendicular cliffs rising sheer from the water’s edge for several hundred feet, grim and austere, but at the same time giving to the landscape a touch of grandeur and majestic beauty. In the far distance to the westward high peaks in an opalescent haze lifted their summits against the sky.
The vast and boundless wilderness inhabited by no human being other than a few wandering Indians, lay in somber and impressive silence, just as God had fashioned it untold ages before, untouched and unmarred by the hand of man. There were no smoking chimneys, no ugly brick walls, no shrieking locomotives; no sound to break the silence save the cry of startled gulls, soaring overhead, the honk of a flock of wild geese in southern flight, and the waves lapping upon the rocky shore. The air was fresh and spicy with the odor of balsam and other forest perfumes. It was a wilderness redolent with suggestions of mysteries hidden in the bosom of its unconquered and unmeasured solitudes and waiting for discovery.